We Tried So Hard
by potatriarchy
Summary: Our favourite boys return from a mission very quietly, something went wrong and while they gave it their best, the feeling they didn't do well enough seems to have settled over them all.


**First fic on my new account, it's not very long, and hopefully you'll be able to follow how I set it out...**

* * *

It had been one of the hardest missions any of them had been to in a long time, finishing up hours after their arrival, the team packing up for home in the early hours of the morning. The trip home had been very solemn and the all silently did their post fight checks, heading up to find out Ohana had stayed awake so that the boys could come home to a warm snack. Jeff came down and joined them in the kitchen, the only Tracy to thank Ohana for her kindness and he took his bowl. He looked over his boys with a small sigh. They were covered in mud and dust, their uniforms were in shambles, he noted a few holes in them and enough ground in dirt that Grandma was going to be spending a week trying to bring them up to scratch.

Alan finished first, passing his only half finished bowl back to Ohana and heading to the door. "Alan-"  
"I just want a shower Dad." Jeff opened his mouth to argue but stopped himself as Alan was already gone. He turned to his other sons, "Debrief in my office at 0500 hours boys." Scott nodded and collected up his brothers bowls as they too headed up to their rooms.

Finally alone and now Alan wasn't even sure he wanted to be. When he'd officially joined IR 6 months ago he knew it would be hard, emotionally and physically but he never could've known just how hard. His IR jumpsuit came off in tatters and he peeled off his underclothes and slowly edged under the hot water. Wincing as it hit the bloody scrape down his cheek only reminded him of how lucky he was to only have suffered the scrape and not been crushed, all credit for that going to Gordon.

He was having a bath he decided and there was no two ways about it as he dumped an entire bottle of muscle soothing gel into the tub, groaning as he slid into the water and slowly started washing all the grit off himself using only his left hand. His right too swollen to use. Gordon sighed at the purple forming around it and made a not to get Brains to x-ray it later to see if he'd broken it or not in his attempt to save Alan and Virgil.

The shower he much needed so was far from his mind it took Virgil looking in the mirror to at least grab a cloth and scrub down the dust off his face before he pulled out a canvas and his paints, working with alarming speed. As the paints hit the canvas there wasn't a lot of definition, some shapes here and there but a lot of blur and smudges. It didn't matter though. What mattered was that he was getting out how he felt without being destructive, or worse, not getting it out at all. It was Scott who helped him start to turn each rescue into a painting. The good, and in this case, the bad, were all splayed out in a whole series of paintings. Anyone who looked at these could tell immediately how the rescue went and how Virgil himself was handling how he felt about it. In this case, the dark twisting lines, the semi formed shapes and the red around them said more than any written recount could. He stood back and sighed, realising quickly what he'd missed and added in a white and blue accented form standing next to their mobile control unit, Scott.

While he loved running mobile control, calling the shots, being in on the action without the worrying number of injuries his brothers clocked up. Scott felt terrible about what had happened on their latest rescue. He was first up to his father's office, restless waiting in his room, half an hour earlier than his brothers. He sat quietly and put in his headphones, trying to drown out the sounds on replay in his head, the devastating screams and a crunch of rubble collapsing that made him sick to his stomach. His brothers filed in one at a time, Virgil still in uniform with the dirt rubbed off his face just having been replaced with paint. Gordon who'd tried to bandage up his hand and come up with a makeshift sling, and lastly Alan, looking exhausted and flushed, fresh from the shower, his youth showing. Their father called in John and with a connection established they all sat in silence until both John and Gordon spoke at the same time

"Dad..."  
"...We tried so hard"

* * *

**Hope you enjoyed it, I'm a bit proud (◡‿◡✿)**


End file.
